Breaking Point, The

Blitzkrieg! For fifty years the very word has conjured up nightmare visions of a military Juggernaut, scything through defenses, overwhelming all opposition, unstoppable. With the fall of France, even President Roosevelt warned of "motorized armies" and lightning attacks. hundreds of miles behind the lines."

Indeed, the stunning German victory at the critical Battle of Sedan in 1940 has been seen as a testament to the invincible German war machine. But in this book, the first to examine both French and German battle records in meticulous detail, Colonel Robert Doughty shows us the truth: German success did not rest upon superior weaponry or a fundamentally new kind of warfare. What won at Sedan were techniques and procedures as old as organized fighting Itsell

Colonel Doughty explains what really happened, on both sides, from squad and platoon level to grand strategy. The main force of victory was not Blitzkrieg but the German infantry, coordinated with other arms and pursuing a consistent and coherent doctrine in the traditional sense. The French defenders, often brave, had been prepared to fight the kind of controlled war of the past, and thus failed to adapt to the German tactical challenges.

In telling the story of Sedan, Colonel Doughty brings to life individual soldiers, ridgelines, copses, gun emplacements charges and bug-outs - all the detail that creates layer and layer of opportunity or obstacle for victory or defeat. The result is an authentic grasp not only of a key battle in a crucial campaign, but of what really happens on the fields of wartime strife. Col. Robert Allan Doughty is a serving officer of the U.S. Army and chairman of the history department at USMA, West Point. His previous book, Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919-1939 (Archon, 1986), was awarded the Paul Birdsall Prize in European Military and Strategic History by the American Historical Association in 1986.